Fantastic Metropolis

According to Jak, this woman invited him to come over for a drink because a while ago he had lent her a cup of sugar. I say that I remember the cup of sugar. According to Jak they sat on her couch, which was deep and plush and smelled like Lemon Fresh Joy, and they drank most of a bottle of Scotch. They talked about graduate school—he says she said she was a second-year student at the business school, she had a little bit of an accent, he says. She said she was from Luxembourg—and then she kissed him. So he kissed her back for a while and then he stuck his hand down under the elastic of her skirt. He says the first thing he noticed was that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. He says the second thing he noticed was that she was smooth down there like a Barbie doll. She didn’t have a vagina.

I interrupt at this point and ask him what exactly he means when he says this. Jak says he means exactly what he said, which is that she didn’t have a vagina. He says that her skin was unusually warm, hot actually. She reached down and gently pushed his hand away. He says that at this point he was a little bit drunk and a little bit confused, but still not quite ready to give up hope. He says that it had been so long since the last time he slept with a woman, he thought maybe he’d forgotten exactly what was where.

He says that the blond woman, whose name is either Cordelia or Annamarie (he’s forgotten which), then unzipped his pants, pushed down his boxers, and took his penis in her mouth. I tell him that I’m happy for him, but I’m more interested in the thing he said about how she didn’t have a vagina.

He says that he’s pretty sure that they reproduce by parthenogenesis. Who reproduce by parthenogenesis, I ask. Aliens, he says, blond women. That’s why there are so many of them. That’s why they all look alike. Don’t they go to the bathroom, I ask. He says he hasn’t figured out that part yet. He says that he’s pretty sure that Nikki is now an alien, although she used to be a human, back when they were going out. Are you sure, I say. She had a vagina, he says.

I ask him why Nikki got married then, if she’s an alien. Camouflage, he says. I say that I hope her fiancé, her husband, I mean, doesn’t mind. Jak says that New York is full of blond women who resemble Sandy Duncan and most of them are undoubtedly aliens, that this is some sort of invasion. After he came in Chloe or Annamarie’s mouth—probably neither name is her real name, he says—he says that she said she hoped they could see each other again and let him out of her apartment. So what do the aliens want with you, I ask. I don’t know, Jak says and hangs up.

I try to call him back but he’s left the phone off the hook. So I go back inside and wake up the man in my bed and ask him if he’s ever made love to a blonde and if so did he notice anything unusual about her vagina. He asks me if this is one of those jokes and I say that I don’t know. We try to have sex, but it isn’t working, so instead I open up a box of my father’s Christmas tree decorations. I take out tinsel and strings of light and ornamental glass fruit. I hang the fruit off his fingers and toes and tell him not to move. I drape the tinsel and lights around his arms and legs and plug him in. He complains some but I tell him to be quiet or my father will wake up. I tell him how beautiful he looks, all lit up like a Christmas tree or a flying saucer. I put his penis in my mouth and pretend that I am Courtney (or Annamarie, or whatever her name is), that I am blond, that I am an alien. The man whose name begins with a C doesn’t seem to notice.

I am falling asleep when the man says to me, I think I love you. What time is it, I say. I think you better leave, before my father wakes up. He says, but it’s not even five o’clock yet. My father wakes up early, I tell him.

He takes off the tinsel and the Christmas lights and the ornamental fruit. He gets dressed and we shake hands and I let him out through the side door of the garage.

 

Some jokes about blondes. Why did the M&M factory fire the blonde? Because she kept throwing away the Ws. Why did the blonde stare at the bottle of orange juice? Because it said concentrate. A blonde and a brunette work in the same office, and one day the brunette gets a bouquet of roses. Oh great, she says, I guess this means I’m going to spend the weekend flat on my back, with my legs up in the air. Why, says the blonde, don’t you have a vase?

 

I never find out the name of the man in my bed, the one with the stud in his penis. Probably this is for the best. My reading is coming up and I have to concentrate on that. All week I leave messages on Jak’s machine but he doesn’t call me back. On the day that I am supposed to go to the airport to pick him up, the day before I am supposed to give a reading, although I haven’t written anything new for over a year, Jak finally calls me.